Cardinal Academician Warns France Against civil War
A fuller text of the address of Cardinal Baudoillart, doyen of the French Academy, on November 20, in support of Marshal Patain's policy, recently reached London. In it the aged Cardinal utters a stern warning against the dangers of civil war " In 1870 as in 1940 there were in France those who wanted war to the bitter end: they earned for us the horrors of the siege of Paris and of the Com
mune." In the name of these far-off memories the Cardinal calls upon his fellow-countrymen to beware: " When I hear," warns the Cardinal, " the talk that is current hi certain drawing-rooms; when, repeated to me, comes the talk of those small popular parliaments held alongside the kerb beside the shops too often empty; when I say to myself that unknown to one another political parties stir up these ferments and seek to make profit out of theta-1 wonder whether all that might result in a civil war far more formidable than the civil war of 1871, a rem/rakes more lasting than that of the Commune.
" Marshal Main has pronounced words displeasing to minds—poisoned for so long by ready-made phrases which are not the expression of considered judgment ; these words which the Marshal has allowed to spring straight from his honest and wellinformed conscience are: co-operation and collaboration.
" Let us gather round the chief and father who to-day is the embodiment of France. Take your part in the general task ; the task indispensnble for future peace ; a task to which each must bring his own contribution; a task which has never been attempted in this way, which assuredly may come to naught. like al human endeavour, but which even if it fails will not leave us in a worse state than that from which we begin to emerge."